The Centre on Wednesday moved the Supreme Court seeking an extension of the tenure of Enforcement Directorate chief Sanjay Kumar Mishra, Bar and Bench reported.

Earlier this month, a bench of Justices BR Gavai, Vikram Nath and Sanjay Karol had directed Mishra to quit on July 31 – four months before his third extension ends in November. The court had ruled that the two extensions given to him in November 2021 and November 2022 were illegal.

After the verdict, Union Home Minister Amit Shah had claimed that it was not important who holds the post and the central agency will “take note of the rampant corruption of a cozy club of entitled dynasts who have an anti-development mindset”.

However, on Wednesday, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta urged a bench headed by Gavai to urgently hear a plea seeking a revision of the judgement on Mishra’s tenure. The court agreed to take up the case at 3.30 pm on Thursday.

Mishra had first been appointed as the Enforcement Directorate director for a period of two years on November 19, 2018. In 2020, his tenure was extended for a year by the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Central government.

In September 2021, the Supreme Court had directed the government not to extend Mishra’s tenure any further. But despite the ruling, the government introduced two ordinances to ensure that the directors of the Enforcement Directorate and the Central Bureau of Investigation could have tenures of up to five years. This enabled Mishra to continue for another year.

In November 2022, the government again extended the 1984-batch Indian Revenue Service officer’s tenure for a year. He was to remain in office till November 18, 2023, according to the notification issued by the government.

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These extensions that had been challenged before the Supreme Court by Opposition leaders.

At the last hearing on July 11, the court had allowed Kumar to continue in his position till July 31 after the Centre expressed concern over finding a new chief in the middle of a peer review being carried out by the Financial Action Task Force.

The three-judge bench had also upheld the amendments made to the Central Vigilance Commission Act and the Delhi Special Police Establishment Act, which allows the Centre to extend the term of probe agency chiefs.

The court had disagreed with the submissions made by Senior Advocate KV Viswanathan that the Centre could extend services as a “carrot and stick” policy to ensure that the Enforcement Directorate and the Central Bureau of Investigation chiefs work according to its wishes.

“A director would always succumb to the pressure of the government so as to ensure that he gets further extension,” Viswanathan contended.

Earlier, the Centre had told the Supreme Court that the petitions challenging Mishra’s extension were politically motivated as they have been filed by members of the Congress and Trinamool Congress, whose leaders are being investigated by the Enforcement Directorate.

Under Mishra’s tenure, the Enforcement Directorate has launched an investigation against several leaders of the Opposition such as Congress leader Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul Gandhi, Trinamool Congress’ Abhishek Banerjee, National Congress leaders Sharad Pawar, Ajit Pawar, Anil Deshmukh and Nawab Malik, National Conference leaders Farooq Abdullah and Omar Abdullah, former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mehbooba Mufti, among others.

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